How far will Olympiacos go this year? And did you understand how Ideye made that goal?
“How far Olympiacos will go, this we cannot know. We will see at the end of the year, it is none of our concerns right now. What we do is try to take one match after the other, make steps forward and perform well. We want to do the best we can in every match. We are happy with our performance and the results obtained. As for Ideye’s goal, we are really happy; he is a pro working hard every day. He had his chance to score earlier in the match but he didn’t. So, when he got a second chance, he did it. We are very pleased with the efforts not only of this player, but the whole team. We are happy he is our striker and he scores goals”.
Given that we are half way through the group stage, is Olympiacos the favorite to qualify despite Arsenal’s win over Bayern?
“I cannot predict the group’s future. What we will do is to take one match after the other, prepare ourselves properly and earn wins. We think of every single match and nothing else. We are happy with the outcome tonight and we will try to take an equally good next step. We will not get ourselves in this drill of predicting the future. What matters is to prepare the squad for every match in the best way possible, so we collect more points”.
Did you expect such a tough match? Can you comment on the 94-minute play? Was it a penalty?
“Of course, I expected a tough match and I had also explained yesterday that I didn’t pay attention to all this discussion about Olympiacos being the favorite of this fixture. It is certain that Dinamo is a good side, since they had won to Arsenal. We came here prepared for a difficult match and we were ready to take the best possible result out of it. We didn’t expect to be the favorite. As for the penalty, you may have had a better angle of view than me, but in all these discussion I always say that everything can happen in a match. It is the referee’s call and he happened to have a different viewpoint than you”.
This year’s edition of Olympiacos seems that the side is doing fine both before and after major European fixtures. What is the secret for keeping the players focused?
“This is our job; to prepare all matches in the best possible way. And it is our task to give all we got on the pitch. We might not always earn a positive result but they represent a great club, so they always have to fight for the best result. It is not easy to always win, but you have to keep on trying”.
You returned on the pitch with a slight delay after the break. We assume you have been talking to your players. Can you reveal us what was that you said?
“As you know, the distance is quite big. I had to walk a lot (laughter). As you saw in the first 25 minutes, we did not perform the way we wanted. We suffered when our opponent put pressure on us. We wanted to find a way and present ourselves in the way we wanted. During the break, we spent some time to see how we were going to become better and turn the match to our favor. We discussed about that for a while, but it was actually the distance between the bench and the lockers.“
We are still looking for what our headlines would be in tomorrow’s papers. Can you give us some ideas?
“It is tough; I understand you have a hard time trying to find a title. What I would like to say tonight is congratulations to my players for their effort. My front page title would be “Congratulations to my players”».
